NASIS 6.x Overview

The NASIS 6.x release is a completely redesigned software product, which uses a Microsoft Windows appearance instead of the older Unix and X Windows. The overall structure is summarized in this diagram:

The NASIS client is an application that has to be installed on your computer and is started from the Windows Start menu, under USDA Applications. It will be installed automatically on USDA workstations; other NASIS users can find the software on the Downloads page.

The NASIS server is located at the USDA Kansas City data center. It holds the full national soils database. Selected parts of the database can be downloaded to the local database in the NASIS client for editing, reporting and review. When someone wants to edit data in their local database, they must “check out” the data for a period of time, which prevents other people from making changes. When a soil survey is ready for publication to the Soil Data Warehouse and Web Soil Survey, a request is sent to the server and the data is sent to the Staging Server.

Work is continuing to improve and expand the capabilities of NASIS 6. Some software problems have been found but could not be fixed in time for this release. Click here to read these known issues. If other problems are found as you use NASIS, please contact the Soils Hotline.